The state of immigration, 2 years into Trump’s presidency – ThinkProgress

From the onset of his marketing campaign, President Donald Trump has made it some extent to demonize black and brown immigrants.

In his June 2015 marketing campaign announcement, then-candidate Trump described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. Through the marketing campaign, he repeatedly referred to as for a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” As soon as president, Trump described Haitian and African immigrants as being from “shithole countries,” in discussions concerning the visa lottery system.

His harsh rhetoric has translated to anti-immigrant insurance policies which have affected tons of of hundreds of individuals.

One week after his inauguration, Trump signed an government order that successfully banned overseas nationals from seven majority-Muslim nations for 90 days. Short-term Protected Standing (TPS), which grants short-term protections for overseas nationals from nations affected by pure disasters or illness, is at present beneath assault by the administration. And to be able to forestall primarily Central American immigrants from pursuing a greater life in the USA, the Trump administration carried out a “zero-tolerance” coverage on the border that resulted within the separation of hundreds of youngsters from their mother and father.

Trump additionally kickstarted a authorities shutdown final month over his demand for greater than $5 billion in funding for a wall alongside the U.S.-Mexico border. His reasoning was largely rooted within the perception that immigrants have been bringing medicine, violence, and illnesses into the USA, regardless of having no proof to again that up. The shutdown, now in its 30th day, has grow to be the longest in U.S. historical past.

During the last two years, Trump’s racist and exclusionary insurance policies have had disastrous impacts on the U.S. immigration system. A look at his administration’s document, by the numbers, proves simply how arduous it has been hit.

24

The quantity of immigrants who’ve died in U.S. custody

Since President Trump took workplace, 22 immigrants have died whereas within the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two immigrant youngsters additionally died in Customs and Border Safety (CBP) custody this previous December.

One of the immigrants who died in ICE custody was 33-year-old Roxsana Hernandez, a transgender Honduran lady who was half of a Central American migrant caravan making its method to the U.S.-Mexico border in April 2018. Hernandez died at a New Mexico hospital in Might final yr, after affected by dehydration and problems associated to HIV. Previous to her dying, she had been held for days in a CBP holding cell earlier than being transferred to an ICE facility.

The circumstances inside these CBP holding cells are so insupportable, they’ve been nicknamed hieleras — “iceboxes” in Spanish — by those that have hung out in them. An post-mortem report later confirmed that Hernandez had additionally allegedly been brutally crushed and abused on the ICE facility previous to her dying.

One other of these immigrants, 40-year-old Efrain De La Rosa, a Mexican nationwide who was held in an ICE detention facility in Georgia, killed himself in July 2018. His demise was third on the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, Georgia in 15 months, in line with nonprofit advocacy group Challenge South.

Thirty-three-year-old Cuban detainee Yulio Castro Garrido additionally died of pneumonia at an ICE facility in Florida final January, and in December 2017, Kamiyar Samimi, an Iranian man, died from cardiac arrest whereas in ICE custody in Colorado.

The two youngsters who died in CBP custody have been each beneath the age of 10. Each have been reported to have had excessive fevers and nausea previous to their deaths, with one baby, Eight-year-old Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, dropping consciousness on the best way to the hospital from the CBP facility, and the opposite, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin, reportedly struggling a collection of seizures and cardiac arrest on her option to the hospital after initially being taken to a CBP facility in New Mexico.

Immigration activist teams have blamed the circumstances inside immigration detention amenities for the deaths of detainees. A 2017 report by Human Rights Watch highlighted poor circumstances in detention facilities throughout the USA, together with main “lapses in health care that have led to severe suffering and at times the preventable or premature death of individuals.”

2,737*

The quantity of immigrant youngsters separated from their mother and father beneath Trump’s “zero-tolerance” coverage

In response to the Division of Well being and Human Providers (HHS), 2,737 youngsters have been positioned into the company’s care after the Division of Justice (DOJ) and DHS carried out Trump’s abusive “zero-tolerance” coverage on the border final spring. These youngsters have been separated from their households and transferred to the care of the Workplace of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) whereas their mother and father have been held in federal detention.

The immigrant youth shelters that housed separated youngsters for weeks and even months are rife with allegations of abuse. Final August, an worker at immigrant youth shelter in Arizona was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing teen woman. A toddler psychologist advised ProPublica the shelters have been a “goldmine” for sexual predators.

A June 2018 courtroom order later mandated the administration reunite the almost three,000 youngsters with their mother and father, however the authorities solely reunited households deemed “eligible.” One father or mother, for instance, was deemed ineligible for quick reunification as a result of of an “outstanding warrant” for a DUI. Some mother and father, many of whom solely converse Spanish or indigenous Central American dialects, have been reportedly tricked by DHS into signing away their rights to be reunited with their youngsters and have been subsequently deported with out them.

The 2,737 quantity, nevertheless, has an enormous asterisk subsequent to it, because the federal authorities can’t say with certainty precisely what number of youngsters have been separated from their mother and father, on account of its mishandling of detention monitoring techniques. A current report from a authorities watchdog company discovered that the federal government separated and launched “thousands” of youngsters earlier than the June 2018 courtroom order and doesn’t know their whereabouts, as there was no concrete system in place to determine them and log their location.

30,000

The quantity of refugees allowed into the USA beneath Trump

The quantity of refugees allowed into the USA annually has been severely lowered within the Trump period. When he entered the White Home in 2017, the refugee cap was at 110,000. Trump then lowered that cap to 50,000, and ultimately to 45,000. Since that point, the cap has been lowered as soon as extra to only 30,000 — the bottom because the refugee program started in 1980.

Regardless of the diminished refugee resettlement numbers beneath Trump, the proportion of Europeans and people from the previous Soviet Union is greater than earlier years, confirming suspicions that the administration needs to limit immigration to the whitest and most “Christian” candidates. Immigration hardliner Stephen Miller has been an in depth adviser to the president since his inauguration and reportedly performed a number one position in slashing the refugee cap from the Obama administration’s 110,000 to 30,000.

300,000

The quantity of immigrants arrested by ICE since Trump took workplace

Through the first two years of the Trump presidency, roughly 300,000 immigrants have been arrested by ICE.

ICE arrests at workplaces alone skyrocketed 640 % this yr, from 311 in 2017 to 2,304 in 2018, based on a year-end report from the company. Some of the extra high-profile raids embrace the arrest of 130 migrant staff in Minnesota and Nebraska, described by DHS as one of the most important raids within the company’s 15-year historical past.

In accordance with native media studies, through the raid, relations stood outdoors sobbing as ICE brokers clad in bullet-proof vests stormed the power, whereas state troopers blocked the doorway. One lady was turned away as she tried to offer immigration papers for her boyfriend. One other desperately tried to name her mom, who was working inside the power.

In Ohio final summer time, one other 114 undocumented staff have been arrested whereas working at a gardening store. That raid was preceded by one other on April 5, at a rural meatpacking plant in Tennessee. Officers arrested 94 staff throughout that raid.

The ICE arrests additionally included a quantity of sponsors who got here ahead to say youngsters separated from their mother and father on the border. From early July via early September final yr, the company arrested 41 undocumented sponsors, many of whom have been the youngsters’s circle of relatives members. With out their sponsors, undocumented immigrant youngsters fell again into federal custody, sustaining the cycle of indefinite detention.

Emboldened by the Trump administration, ICE has focused undocumented immigrants for on a regular basis occurrences, together with arresting a person throughout a wedding interview, a father getting ready for his son’s baptism, and a mom with legitimate work visa. Even the undocumented immigrants who comply with the regulation by showing earlier than U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Providers (USCIS) at routine check-ins are usually not protected.

800,000

Whereas Trump likes to say that the disaster on the southern border is the end result of unchecked legal immigration, the actual disaster seems to be the record-high backlog of greater than 800,000 instances awaiting their day in courtroom. The determine rises to greater than 1 million, in case you embrace those the U.S. Lawyer Basic needs on the docket.

The 800,000 quantity is the end result of the administration’s assaults on the U.S. asylum system, the Trump administration’s determination to additional prohibit who’s eligible to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, the implementation of case quotas for immigration judges, and the choice to detain migrants on the border for longer quantities of time.

The Trump administration has particularly ramped up a course of referred to as metering, which places an arbitrary cap on the quantity of asylum purposes accepted every day at ports of entry. The cap can change from each day and port to port. This coverage has resulted within the development of tent cities alongside the U.S.-Mexico border, with a whole lot of households ready an indeterminable quantity of time only for the chance to use.

The president’s demand for a border wall has worsened the issue, as the federal government shutdown introduced immigration courts to a whole standstill. A research launched by Syracuse College’s Transactional Data Entry Clearinghouse (TRAC) estimated that, because the begin of the shutdown in December, greater than 42,000 instances have been canceled. That quantity is more likely to develop by 20,000 every further week the federal government stays closed.

An extended backlog creates a quantity of difficulties for the immigrants who’ve scheduled their hearings years prematurely, and have waited patiently for his or her day in courtroom.

Immigration attorneys and judges are not sure of how or when the instances can be rescheduled. When a listening to is cancelled, the instances scheduled for that date don’t simply roll over, a decide has to both push it to the again of the road or bump up another instances. Compounding the issue, staffing is skinny and nobody is allowed to volunteer their time to work via the shutdown.